Evergreen Opinion Piece: It’s Time To Get Rid Of The Electoral College

As of this writing, Donald Trump has won 279 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 228, winning the presidency, despite being about 200,000 votes behind in the popular vote. To be sure, there are still a lot of votes to be counted and Trump could still end up “winning” the popular vote (I could quote some poll numbers here where experts estimate the odds of that, but expert pollster estimates have never seemed as useless as they do today). But a mere coincidence like that wouldn’t be enough to justify a system that no one really understands, that has long outlived its utility. Okay, yes, this is partly sour grapes (this may come as a shock, but I didn’t want Donald Trump to win), but even if the totals were reversed, I’d like to think I’d still believe in the basic justice of one person one vote.

This is almost a hack column to write, because it could’ve been written 16 years ago, or 50 (and it probably was), and it’d still be just as relevant. And yet, the Electoral College endures. The phrase “popular vote” should seem laughably redundant, yet we throw it around casually like it’s a real thing. That we’re so used to how much it sucks should not be a defense for it sucking. Most people would agree with the idea that every American’s vote should count equally, wouldn’t they? That the person with the most votes wins? That’s basic democracy, the thing we’re so fond of saying we live in, and something we’re always demanding for others when we bomb them.

Yet that’s not how it works. The largest state currently has about 70 times the population of the smallest one, though in the Electoral College, the ratio is 18.3 to 1. Which means that, in a very real sense, if you live in a larger state, your vote counts for less. And that’s to say nothing of smaller states’ equal representation in the Senate, or the arbitrary primary process that lets early contests like Iowa have an undue effect on the outcome. How many more concessions do smaller states really need?

The Electoral College was designed, in fact (yet another result of the same constitutional convention horse trading that gave us the three-fifths compromise), to be a check on pure democracy, which many of the founders feared. It was designed to prevent tyranny of the majority, and as Alexander Hamilton (he’s that guy from the rap play) explained the play in The Federalist Papers:

All these advantages will happily combine in the plan devised by the convention; which is, that the people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President. […]

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.

I know I started this off saying I wasn’t going to bag on Trump in this, but I can’t imagine a more perfect illustration that a process designed to prevent “any man who is not endowed with the requisite qualifications” has failed than when a fake businessman from TV gets elected president. As the rap musical guy tells it, the Electoral College sounds like it was designed precisely to prevent candidates like Donald Trump (“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” how perfect a Trump description is that?). But this isn’t about Trump. He won according to the rules of the game as everyone understood them and there’s no changing that. Fine.

We like to pretend our constitution is sacrosanct (and certainly, it did have some good bits) but we already figured out that lots of parts of it didn’t work so great. We decided making the guy who gets the second-most presidential votes the vice president wasn’t such a hot idea in 1804, and we switched to direct election of senators (who used to be chosen by state legislatures) in 1913 (among many other things, like letting women and black people vote — 1920 and 1870, sorta). When you ask the loudest constitution lovers their favorite parts, they invariably start citing the Bill of Rights. I.e., the stuff that wasn’t in it at first that we had to add later. Which does reveal one of the best parts of the constitution, if inadvertently: we’re allowed to adapt it, to add stuff that makes good sense and do away with things that no longer work.

In any case, it seems like a pretty basic, straightforward proposition that the candidate who receives the most votes should win. Sort of like in basketball, where the team that gets the most points wins the basketball game. And yet if Hillary Clinton ends up winning the popular vote, Donald Trump would be the fifth president to receive fewer votes than his competitor (who could forget that son of a bitch Rutherford B. Hayes stealing an election he lost by 250,000 votes, ever after dubbed Rutherfraud). This would be the second time this has happened in five elections. That’s a 40% failure rate. Which seems like an incredible high tolerance for oopsies, doesn’t it? And again, this outcome seems particularly rich when the winner is a guy who kept complaining about a rigged system and made his bones promoting a conspiracy theory about the president being illegitimate. But at this point I think my irony censors are fried.

Even if the winner of the most votes happens to win this time, it will be a happy coincidence. Isn’t it time we stop allowing something this important to be decided by coincidence? There’s a lot of blame to go around for the results of this election, and my stomach already aches from all the sour grapes, but the idea that everyone’s vote for president should be counted equally, regardless of who they vote for, seems like the easiest, most non-controversial place to start. If we’re honestly trying to live up to this whole “all men are created equal” business (interpreting “men” broadly to mean “people”), then shouldn’t we start with counting all votes equally?

OK, but this is about # 594,334,372 on the list of things that need to be changed in this country. Everyone knows the score here. The DNC fucked themselves and split their own party.

By: Vince Mancini

11.09.2016 @ 4:24 PM

The DNC was awful and I don’t know when I’ll ever stop being pissed about them. But two out of the last five elections going to the candidate who got fewer votes seems like something that deserves an immediate change. I’d like to believe I’d think that even if things were reversed.

We don’t have to address problems one at a time, I think we are capable of multitasking. And having us elect our President democratically instead of through an archaic, antiquated system specifically designed to allow the powerful elites to check the population at large seems like it should be more important than #594,334,372. Especially since we’ve now had two instances in 20 years where the American people’s choice for President did NOT become President. Gee, maybe the seventh or eight time the spirit of democracy gets thwarted, we’ll actually amend the system to make it actually democratic.

You’re complaining about the rules of the game set for both sides yet you want to complain about the rules when they don’t work out in your favor? There have been plenty of times in recent history when all three branches were under the control of Democrats or Republicans, yet no action was taken.

It’s easy to point to this but it works both ways. If you’re a conservative voter in huge states like California, New York or Illinois, you are better off staying at home because those states are going to be blue. You have to go about 15 deep down the list of the largest states before you start hitting consistent Republican voting states. Aside from Texas, the rest are all battlegrounds.

For all the scare tactics and rhetoric of voter suppression, this a much better example and it largely favors democrats. If you

The republicans split their party too. Lyin’ Ryan, the republican majority house leader didn’t support the republican candidate!
Former republican presidents and former republican presidential candidates didn’t support the republican nominee!
And there was that little thing with the Russian hacking only Democrats turned over to Wikileaks, and the FBI also colluding with the Drumpf campaign.
Drumpf was right about one thing. This election was rigged, and there is proof for all to see.

Trump carried Wisconsin despite the lack of Ryan’s endorsement, so they didn’t divide the voters within the party which is the only thing that matters.

I am dumbfounded by people that are pissed about additional facts and truth coming to light about the DNC, regardless of how it leaked. I guess being blissfully ignorant is the preference of some… I am sure whoever leaked the Access Hollywood audio and video had no agenda at all.

@Whatitiz73 What do any of your arguments about the DNC have to do with the validity of the electoral college as a system in the year 2016? Do you have an argument to make in favor of the EC or are you just going to blather on about the DNC instead of addressing the topic that this article is about? Should the POTUS be elected by popular vote going forward or not? Yes or no? If no, why not? Take partisan blinders off and leave the most recent election results out of it and just examine it purely from the perspective of its relevance in modern times and how it fits within a supposed democratic system.

I am saying the EC is a pretty confusing thing to be mad at considering all the circumstances. Everyone understands the rules of this game and only choose to complain about it when it doesn’t go there way. I am not sure what it partisan about saying the DNC shit the bed. That is a fact.

The EC has benefited both Republicans and Democrats over the years and railing against it now doesn’t make sense to me. There are many valid reasons to keep some aspects of the EC as outlined by others in this comment section and many valid reasons to remove it. I am more in favor of a split system like Maine and Nebraska.

I’ve thought about this every election cycle. My concern has always been that it would eliminate any remaining shred of professionalism and allow for a full blown circus of hucksters grifting the voting public. I think that scenario is now well established which leads me to lean back towards getting rid of the electoral college.

As a comparison it works without issue on the state and local levels so I think we could implement this at the presidential level. If for any other reason than to allow for greater representation of third party candidates. Which I think we need more of and not less of in order to have political dialogues on actual issues and not gossipy anecdotes about the candidates.

Side note is that using only a popular vote would allow for better representation at a state level as different segments (D, R, I, whatever) now directly influence the outcome instead of defaulting to only 100% blue or 100% red.

Every now-and-then weird stirrings come out of Houston-Harris County to secede from Texas and become its own tiny state. It would have about the same population as Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, and the Dakotas COMBINED. The county went for Clinton over Trump by something like 160,000 votes.

What’s the incentive to vote if you live in a deep blue (California, Vermont, etc.) or deep red (Oklahoma, Idaho, etc.) state when the winner of your state is a foregone conclusion? Anyone else sick of having essentially 5 or 6 out of 50 states decide who our President will be? Ohio and Florida should not have that much power, ESPECIALLY Florida, the state where people keep eating other people’s faces off while high on drugs.

Um, this election right here pretty much outlined why, at least this time, the election was not decided by just a couple states. It’s been a while since it’s been this close so far into the night, and it’s the first time in recent memory where California even figured into it.

1) It means the little states become completely irrelevant and only amplifies the fact that there are about 7 states to campaign in.

2) It would divide the country in a completely different way. Right now it’s Red and Blue states. It would be Red and Blue counties under the no EC system. Take a look at the individual county maps in Blue states. It will blow your mind. A few examples from the past can be found here, [www.cracked.com], but there are current ones floating around too.

3) The framers came up with that concept in a time when people only knew about the candidates thru the newspapers, and that was if they could even read (and own land, cause then you couldn’t vote anyway). They obviously never contemplated social media, or the fact that a single huckster could reach every set of eyeballs in the country all at once. We need a system that doesn’t encourage pandering to the lowest common denominator, and the EC checks that by balancing the states within themselves (see item 2).

4) The United States was set up to be a group of essentially autonomous mini-nations that worked together for their own common good. Why do you think the individual states were so small at the beginning? They were split up based on shared views and values. The very first US form of gerrymandering to be sure, but the EC allows each individual mini-nation to have it’s voice in selecting the United States highest office.

Also, people only seem to be upset with the EC when their candidate loses. Would this article exist if Clinton had won the EC but lost the popular vote?

By: Vince Mancini

11.09.2016 @ 7:10 PM

1. How many states do they campaign in now? All focus is on swing states.
2. Is that worse?
3. As I wrote in the article, if the goal of the EC was to eliminate hucksters, it has failed utterly.
4. This seems outdated and no longer true.

@Vince Mancini Lots of states. They were campaigning in Utah toward the end for Christ’s sake.

If we went to a straight popular vote, candidates would only campaign where they could get the most votes: LA, NYC, Chicago, Miami.

I don’t like the outcome any more than any other left winger, but this election proves that the rural, sparsely populated areas of our nation can make a difference. With a straight popular vote, us city-dwellers would be making all the decisions.

It would also favor larger populated states once the elected official got into office. Smaller states would be after thoughts in legislation and bigger states getting all the attention and favors. Not really fair either way you do it. I would like to see more power given to the states and the federal government step back. But that too would have its drawbacks.

There would be such an uproar from the favored small states at the removal of the Electoral College that I can’t imagine it ever occurring. How ’bout instead we just tweak it so that electoral votes for each state are awarded proportionally to each candidate rather than using the totally-bonkers winner-take-all scheme currently in place? That way, the small-state bastards still get to feel like they’re playing too, and it’s no longer useless to be a Democrat in Idaho or a Republican in California.

This is what Maine and Nebraska do. They break it up be Congressional District (not percentage of vote), so the state is essentially much smaller versions of the whole. Except for the 2 Senate allocated votes, those are based on the whole state.

jefferson wanted the constitution to be a living document, to be updated every 12-16 years. The last real amendment we had, (not counting the 27th which took 200 years to pass) was in 1971.
Its not some sacred document, it should be updated to represent the times and people whom are currently living.

Jefferson was in Paris during the ratification process; but he proposed bloody revolution once in a generation to re-invigorate the republican spirit of the nation. He wanted to essentially default on the national debt after each such revolution so the next generation could start with a clean balance sheet.

You mean the disenfranchised rural voters who unexpectedly turned out in droves and pushed Trump to a decisive victory? Those ones? I’d say those disenfranchised voters had a hell of a voice this time around.

The likelihood of this ever happening is very slim. It would require a constitutional amendment that requires either 2/3 majority of Congress or the never used constitutional convention called by 2/3 of the state legislatures.
In both cases, why would any of the smaller populated states or their federal representatives vote in favor?

This could be achieved with extreme ease and with no need to amend the Constitution. Google “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” We’re already over halfway to the goal of achieving this. Vermont and Rhode Island, two of the smallest states in the country, have already approved this so maybe you can ask them why they voted in favor of the NPVIC. This plan has been in the works since 2006, long before Hillary Clinton lost the election but won the popular vote, so no one can claim that it’s driven by a partisan defeat in the 2016 election.

While we are at it we should be able to vote for 3 candidates and prioritize them. Then you can do instant run-offs and third parties can play the game without people being scared of “throwing their vote away”

Christ, if we had instant run-offs, that orange monster wouldn’t have made it through the primaries. Also, it would push all candidates toward the middle, which would cut down on all this culture war nonsense.

To the large v small state argument: The elimination of the electoral college takes away bias of either having a disproportionate large or small number of electoral votes. It actually dissolves the state as a demographic and instead shifts it to the voter regardless of where they reside. In California this creates a situation where Republican voters actually matter along with third parties. Or in Texas where a very large percent of the population votes Democratic but not currently the majority.

Basically the “state” has no real bearing on the election result. Only the personal vote.

The electoral college only helps republicans. And since they are the ones in power there is no chance in hell it is going the way of the Dodo.
It’s the same reason the filibuster rule will never be changed again.
It allowed the republican party to subvert Democracy for the last 8 years.
Hopefully the Democrats will now return the favor.

Yes, of course it does… allowing gigantic states like California and New York to throw 100% of their votes to Democrats every election hurts them every time. Look at the 15 largest states and there are far more historical Democratic strongholds than Republican and the rest are battleground states.

@Whatitiz73 isn’t that the exact reason why the EC helps Republicans far more than Democrats? The large states via population get allocated far fewer EC votes per person than they would via pure population.

If the EC representation was more proportional to the population relative to other states, it would in fact then benefit Democrats more (just like a national popular vote often does).

Eliminating the electoral college just means swing states get replaced by swing cities like Chicago, LA, NYC, Dallas, etc. A candidate would more or less never have to visit a state like Alaska, Wyoming, The Dakotas, etc. when they could just try to take NYC and get more votes from one city than all those states combined

Please enlighten us as to how many times either Clinton or Trump visited Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, or South Dakota in this most recent election under the EC system. When you have your answer, please re-examine the argument you just made. FYI, after consulting a candidate “travel tracker”, I found the answer to be 0. Zero times. That’s the number of times both Trump and Clinton visited the four states you mentioned during the General Election campaign.

@ak3647 My argument still stands just fine, hence the “etc.” when I was listing states. Trump was in NH last week, but if all he wanted was the popular vote, there’d be zero reason for him to do so. Any non-urban area would be a waste of time to campaign in if you could secure votes in major metropolitan areas.

I will run on a platform of tax breaks for all people within 60 miles of an ocean. See how this works? You may as well turn 95% of our land to uninhabitable. This is a simple and stupid analogy, but let’s assume our founding fathers knew what they were doing.

They wouldn’t be deciding the fate of the country. A majority of the American people would. Where they live is irrelevant. One citizen, one vote, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Plenty of people live in Texas, last time I checked. And in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois…

We have the Electoral College for the same reason it was created in the first place; to keep states with large populations from overriding the political wishes of less populous states. For instance, suppose a state with an extremely large population – let’s call it California – voted overwhelmingly for one candidate over the other, to the point that there was about a 2.5 million vote margin in favor that candidate in that state. Let’s also suppose the candidate that lost California by that margin held about a 2.3 million vote lead after votes were tallied in the other 49 states. One populous state would have just changed the outcome of the election in such a case. If that seems fine to you, imagine California had been as competitive as Texas and Texas had gone overwhelmingly for the candidate you hate.

I understand this argument, but it’s dumb. First off, one person one vote makes everyone an individual, the way it was meant to be. Secondly, neither states nor cities have ever voted as a monolithic bloc. Do senatorial candidates make a point to ignore all the rural areas? No. Under the current system, the rural areas of California that vote overwhelmingly republican (where I’m from) basically don’t matter as it is. Because, guess what, voters in a certain state don’t vote as a monolithic bloc either. And in any case, there’s no way you’re going to tell me that “voters in certain areas should count more!” and have it not sound horribly undemocratic. Each person gets one vote that counts equally. That is the fairest way.

@Mancy It would not be giving the power to one state. It would be giving the power to everyone equally no matter where they lived. A candidate that does not get the majority of the votes in a presidential election becoming a president is as undemocratic as it can get.
The United States of America is a country that elects one president, so it should make no difference where the people who vote him or her live (as long as they are a citizen, they can even live in another country).Local governing officials are there to make sure every area gets their say in the senate and the house of representatives.

And there is one other thing that I simply cannot grasp as a non-american and I hope someone can explain this to me: how is it possible that a presidential candidate (or any candidate running for any major office) is not required to give out their financial information (not even taxable income)?
How can you be sure that the person is not corrupt (supported by certain interest groups/industries/companies/foreign countries) or, for instance, exaggerating their success as a businessman? Why would anyone in their right mind vote for someone to refuses to be open and honest?
Sure it is possible to cheat with your taxes (I’m pretty sure Trump has done that all his life), but it would be a lot harder after everything being exposed to the critical eye of the public (i.e. the people who then get to vote).

I don’t think the electoral college is the problem. Changes to the ballot and how votes are counted could help build a political ecosystem that is less hostile to multiple parties and would go a long way toward making a more representative government. Duverger’s law (if you buy into the theory) claims that plurality vote systems, like ours, tend to favor two-party systems. Changing that to something like a ranked voting system could make it easier to have more party diversity at all levels of government, since it alleviates the “spoiler” concerns that routinely scuttle third-party campaigns. Many “Democrats” who voted for Clinton were, nevertheless, sickened by the politics-as-usual DNC shenanigans and frustrated that her policies only vaguely overlap their beliefs. Likewise, many Trump voters supported him despite being repulsed by his racist and misogynistic attitude. I think that having better and more varied options that more accurately represent your values and beliefs is a good way to force the existing parties to clean up their acts and actually learn how to listen to the electorate. We’re never going to all agree on everything, but the only reason we have a Trump presidency right now is because very few people felt really good about either one of the candidates we ended up with.

Silver lining to the Trump presidency, this is the fist time I can say I’ve seen the first lady’s boobs. Except for those photos of Elanor Roosevelt that my uncle sent me. But I’m pretty sure those were photoshopped.

I think overall the idea is how important individual votes are as it pertains to the national government versus states influences as a whole. Since you mentioned the Senate, I think it’s worth noting I have no issues with that equal representation. As federal legislation impacts all states, having some means of ensuring equal representation regardless of where you live is important.

But I do thing there is room to improve the EC. Because as some have noted, it is framed as a means to help ensure that less populous states don’t get run over. That said, the EC as currently configured works in the exact inverse. That is states with far fewer people have far more power to override what could be the will of the people. I saw an example above about how 1 state could skew the results (like California) because of how many people there are that conflicts with a smaller state. But the current EC does the same thing, it can allow a couple states to go to one candidate closely (lets say PA, MI and WI since they went to Trump by a combined total of 110k voters) can completely offset the more than 2.5 million Clinton won in CA. So based on vote allocation alone, Clinton in those 4 states is up a net 2.4 million votes, but only up 9 EC votes. Say what you will about a populous state overrunning a smaller one, but here you have a smaller group of individuals overrunning a large population.

We are one Republic divided by fifty, currently, but regardless of the number each state is represented by it’s two democrats and populace. It’s the fairest system thus devised. I would challenge anyone to find a more open, fair systematic method of voicing their individual opinion of its populace, form of government. There is no perfect way to hold societies together and still hold governance.

I would have no problem with the EC if the winner take all system was removed. The EC is a great way to call a race. I couldn’t imagine watching two jack offs standing next to a running count for 6 hours.

Keep the point system the same, and then divide the points up by the percentage of votes a candidate receives. If Americans can deal with decimals in fantasy football, and election isn’t going to blow our minds. How many points each state can submit is skewed, as Vince pointed out, so a candidate should have to get a certain percentage of the popular vote and win the EC to be the nominee.

Hey Vince, you sold me on your talent when I saw your Vanilla Ice movie review. However, you are wrong on this. We are a Republic, not a democracy. The Founding Fathers saw a societal fairness that will live forever in a living document. Changes were made and I agree with them. It is a living document. But they made this a Republic for the exact reason Democracy alone would fail.

If they had created a Democracy, the majority wins every time. The problem is the majority live and have lived in concentrated areas, This is not representative of the whole country and individual rights. That’s why a Republic form of government levels the playing field. If you look back in history, the majority rule of govt. never works.

Also, of the 5 times the majority did NOT decide US elections, they resulted in the end of Reconstruction, George W. Bush, and now this fucken psychopath. The majority made demonstrably better decisions in all those instances than our ridiculously idolized Constitution.

Conservatives and fringe loonies like the John Birch Society have tricked too many Americans into believing the Constitution is a book of the bible that descending complete, flawless, and uncompromising from the heavens. No matter how much the Founding Fathers prayed when they wrote it, I can guarantee you that every king, czar, and emperor prayed more during his coronation.

I don’t see why privileging highly-populated states over low-population states (popular vote) is so much worse than the current system, which favors low-populated states over high population states (electoral college). Obama and McCain spent something like 98 percent of their time and money in only 15 states. Why is spending so much time in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia better than spending so much time in New York, California, and Texas? And why the hell is “tyranny of the masses” worse than “tyranny of the farmer?”

The thought that over 700,000 Californians have to share one elector while fewer than 200,000 Wyoming-ites get an elector is absurd. It’s also pretty suspicious that Wyoming is 90% white and its percentage of college grads is below the national average, while California is 73% white and has an above-average percentage of college grads. I’m not saying Elon Musk’s vote should count more than someone living in the middle of nowhere, but his vote should definitely not count less.

Also, while no system is perfect, can we at least trying one that isn’t de facto racist?

“it’s technically true that people in smaller states, regardless of race, are at an advantage because of the Electoral College, it also happens that the over-represented smaller states are disproportionately white. Of the 33 states and D.C. that are overrepresented (specifically those with 10 or fewer electoral votes), twenty-eight of them are whiter than the national average… More particularly, D.C. and the 12 states with 3 or 4 electoral votes are only 25 percent racial/ethnic minorities. On the other hand, in the four biggest states (the most under-represented), 52 percent of the population is a minority, compared to only 37 percent of the country as a whole.”

“…The three most populous states (California, Texas, and New York, which make up over 25% of the total U.S. population), where a person’s vote counts the least, are the three states with the most non-whites.”

“…In 2000, 2004, and 2008… four of the five largest and most racially diverse states (California, Texas, New York, and Illinois) were largely ignored by presidential candidates since those states weren’t seen as competitive. As Texas A&M professor George Edward put it, ‘The electoral college thus discourages attention to the interests of African Americans because they are unlikely to shift the outcome in a state as a whole.'”